Susanna Clarke famous quotes

She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Regret #Rain #Color

Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.
-- Susanna Clarke

#People #Complaining #Doe

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Morning #Tuesday #People

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Waiting #Dumb #World

I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Dream #Country #People

Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never would.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Men #Honor #Gentleman

Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Life #Watches #Way

Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. "Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!" "Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. "That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Cat #Reflection #Imperfection

Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Drawing #Habit #Observation

Bryon tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Eye #Half #Odd

It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Thinking #Clothes #People

you must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Criticism #Way #Faces

Oh! And they read English novels! David! Did you ever look into an English novel? Well, do not trouble yourself. It is nothing but a lot of nonsense about girls with fanciful names getting married.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Girl #Names #Looks

But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Song #Sleep #Names

Well, Henry, you can cease frowning at me. If I am a magician, I am a very indifferent one. Other adepts summon up fairy-spirits and long-dead kings. I appear to have conjured the spirit of a banker.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Kings #Long #Frowning

Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Yorkshire #Dutch #Strange

You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Mean #Mad #Dukes

After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Rain #Sight #Blue

It was an old fashioned house --the sort of house in fact, as Strange expressed it, which a lady in a novel might like to be persecuted in.
-- Susanna Clarke

#House #Might #Facts

Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Lonely #Play #People

Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Wine #Drunk #Magic

But, though French, she was also very brave...
-- Susanna Clarke

#Brave

When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland!
-- Susanna Clarke

#Light #Scotland #Rose

There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovely disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Country #Laughter #Mind

Ha!' said the tall man drily. 'He was in high luck. Rich old uncles who die are in shockingly short supply.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Uncles #Men #Luck

I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Struggle #Mean #Eye

There must come a time when the bullets will run out
-- Susanna Clarke

#Running #Bullets

All books are doors; and some of them are wardrobes.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Book #Doors #Wardrobe

Strange bent over these things, with a concentration to rival Minervois's own, questioning, criticizing and proposing. Strange and the two engravers spoke French to each other. To Strange's surprize Childermass understood perfectly and even addressed one or twoquestions to Minervois in his own language. Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Two #Rivals #Yorkshire

How is a magician to exist without books? Let someone explain that to me. It is like asking a politician to achieve high office without the benefit of bribes or patronage.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Book #Office #Benefits

You've got to sing like you don't need the money. You've got to love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like there's nobody watching. You've got to come from the heart, if you want it to work.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Love #Hurt #Attitude

He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Magic #Lessons #Bears

I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Silence #Solitude #After Hours

She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Senior #Country #Names

I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one...
-- Susanna Clarke

#People #Brain #Noise

Yet it is true—skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books I read, or languages I master, I will never be anything but a curiosity—like a talking pig or a mathematical horse.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Horse #Book #Mean

For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Cat #Silence #Peculiar

It is also true that his hair had a reddish tinge and, as everybody knows, no one with red hair can ever truly be said to be handsome.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Hair #Handsome #Red

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.
-- Susanna Clarke

#People #House #Gentleman

What nobility of feeling! To sacrifice your own pleasure to preserve the comfort of others! It is a thing, I confess, that would never occur to me.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Sacrifice #Feelings #Comfort

Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation...
-- Susanna Clarke

#Lovers #Creation #Rational

How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose).
-- Susanna Clarke

#Men #Evil #Stupidity

The land is all too shallow It is painted on the sky And trembles like the wind-shook rain When the Raven King passed by
-- Susanna Clarke

#Kings #Rain #Wind

He screamed. Mmm?' inquired the gentleman. I...I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.' It is a bog,' said the gentleman, helpfully. It is certainly a most terrifying substance.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Gentleman #Substance #Bogs

This is a very grave matter, punishable by...well, I do not exactly know what, but something rather severe, I should imagine.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Matter #Imagine #Should

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Years #Cities #Long

..The argument he was conducting with his neighbor as to whether the English magician had gone mad because he was a magician, or because he was English.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Mad #Gone #Argument

And the name of the one shall be Fearfulness. And the name of the other shall be Arrogance... Well, clearly you are not Fearfulness, so I suppose you must be Arrogance.' This was not very polite.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Names #Arrogance #Polite

To be more precise it was the color of heartache.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Color #Heartache

It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Character #Names #Needs

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.
-- Susanna Clarke

#World #Doe #Easy

It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry.
-- Susanna Clarke

#People #World #Young

He gave her his heart. She took it and placed it quietly in the pocket of her gown. No one observed what she did.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Heart #Pockets #Gowns

I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Lying #Magic #Magician

And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!
-- Susanna Clarke

#Book #Thinking #Noses

There is nothing else in magic but the wild thought of the bird as it casts itself into the void. There is no creature upon the earth with such potential for magic. Even the least of them may fly straight out of this world and come by chance to the Other Lands. Where does the wind come from that blows upon your face, that fans the pages of your book? Where the harum-scarum magic of small wild creatures meets the magic of Man, where the language of the wind and the rain and the trees can be understood, there we will find the Raven King.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Kings #Rain #Book

He smiles but rarely and watches other men to see when they laugh and then does the same.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Men #Laughing #Doe

The governess was not much liked in the village. She was too tall, too fond of books, too grave, and, a curious thing, never smiled unless there was something to smile at.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Book #Village #Curious

He had once found himself in a room with Lady Bessborough's long-haired white cat. He happened to be dressed in an immaculate black coat and trousers, and was there thoroughly alarmed by the cat's stalking round and round and making motions as if it proposed to sit upon him. He waited until he believed himself to be unobserved, then he picked it up, opened a window, and tossed it out. Despite falling three storeys to the ground, the cat survived, but one of its legs was never quite right afterward and it always evinced the greatest dislike of gentlemen in black clothes.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Fall #Cat #White

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Inspirational #Life #Writing

It is curious and we magicians collect curiosities, you know.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Curiosity #Curious #Magician

Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone - which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.
-- Susanna Clarke

#Angel #Healthy #Fairy